they could neither act nor subsist. The governments which
are founded upon a single principle or a single feeling which is easily
defined are perhaps not the best, but they are unquestionably the
strongest and the most durable in the world.

In examining the Constitution of the United States, which is the most
perfect federal constitution that ever existed, one is startled, on
the other hand, at the variety of information and the excellence of
discretion which it presupposes in the people whom it is meant to
govern. The government of the Union depends entirely upon legal
fictions; the Union is an ideal nation which only exists in the mind,
and whose limits and extent can only be discerned by the understanding.

When once the general theory is comprehended, numberless difficulties
remain to be solved in its application; for the sovereignty of the
Union is so involved in that of the States that it is impossible to
distinguish its boundaries at the first glance. The whole structure
of the Government is artificial and conventional; and it would be ill
adapted to a people which has not been long accustomed to conduct
its own affairs, or to one in which the science of politics has not
descended to the humblest classes of society. I have never been more
struck by the good sense and the practical judgment of the Americans
than in the ingenious devices by which they elude the numberless
difficulties resulting from their Federal Constitution. I scarcely
ever met with a plain American citizen who could not distinguish, with
surprising facility, the obligations created by the laws of Congress
from those created by the laws of his own State; and who, after having
discriminated between the matters which come under the cognizance of the
Union and those which the local legislature is competent to regulate,
could not point out the exact limit of the several jurisdictions of the
Federal courts and the tribunals of the State.

The Constitution of the United States is like those exquisite
productions of human industry which ensure wealth and renown to their
inventors, but which are profitless in any other hands. This truth is
exemplified by the condition of Mexico at the present time. The Mexicans
were desirous of establishing a federal system, and they took the
Federal Constitution of their neighbors, the Anglo-Americans, as their
model, and copied it with considerable accuracy. *s But although they
had borrowed the letter of the law, t